12. The Anchor #2
"I don't want candles." I take his hand and flatten it over my sternum, letting him feel my heart slamming against my ribs.
"Feel that? That's not shock. That's not trauma.
That's me, wanting you. I've been half alive for twenty-three years.
Perfect posture. Perfect grades. Perfect daughter.
" The word tastes like ash now, and I let him hear it.
"The one thing the Consortium can't take and my father never touched is this choice. Let me make it."
"Tomorrow you could regret it." But his thumb has started moving against my sternum, a slow stroke he doesn't seem to notice.
"Tomorrow I could be dead. So could you." I hold his stare. "I refuse to die a museum piece."
Something shifts behind his gray eyes—the argument dying, the hunger rising to take its place.
I look around the barren room—the rusted sink, the cold concrete, the sagging bed. A genuine laugh escapes my throat.
"If this is going to be my first time, who better than the man of my dreams?" I pull my wrists free and wrap my arms around the back of his neck, drawing his face down to mine. "Dax, please stop being a gentleman and fuck me already."
The gentleman wages a losing war against the predator.
"Make me useless to them," I whisper against the rapid pulse at the base of his throat. "Take my virginity, so the Consortium can't have it."
The professional distance shatters.
The operator vanishes, consumed by hunger.
His hands drop from my shoulders to my waist, gripping hard. He lifts me off the concrete floor and pins my back against the cold, damp wall.
The impact knocks a gasp from my lungs.
His mouth crashes down on mine. Nothing gentle in it. A violent claiming—a clash of teeth and need. He tastes like danger.
I wrap my legs around his waist and drag my fingernails down the muscles of his back, leaning into the friction. I want the heat. I want to obliterate the untouchable ballerina.
He tears his mouth from mine, breathing ragged, and buries his face in the crook of my neck, his lips searing the skin below my jawline.
"You're destroying my control." A harsh rasp against my collarbone.
"Good." I arch my back, pressing flush against him. "I don't want control. I want you to fuck me. Break me. Destroy the ballerina so I can finally be free."
He carries me across the room in three strides and drops me onto the bed. The rusted springs groan in protest.
He stands over me, staring down, focused and hungry. The dim tactical light casts jagged shadows across the scars on his face. A weapon, aimed entirely at me.
He grabs the hem of his damp shirt and yanks it over his head.
His chest is a wall of scarred muscle. Bullet wounds. Knife slashes. The fresh red line along his ribs I glued shut in the motel bathroom. The topography of a man who lives in the shadows.
Before I can trace the violence mapped on his skin, he drops onto the bed and covers my body with his.
I grab the hem of my shirt to drag it off—fast, greedy—but his hand closes over mine, stilling it.
"Slow." Half command, half plea.
"We don't have time for slow." I arch beneath him, impatient to burn.
"Then we'll steal it." His gray eyes pin me to the canvas. "You made your demand. You'll get it. But first I'm going to learn you."
Something in his voice—low, certain, reverent—empties the argument out of me.
He eases back onto his heels, giving me room. Giving me the choice.
I rise and pull his shirt over my head myself, baring my skin to the humid air. His breath leaves him slow through his teeth.
"Beautiful." The word scrapes out of him like it costs him something.
He strips the rest away piece by piece, unhurried, calloused hands sliding the damp fabric down my legs.
The air hits my bare flesh in a wash of heat and goosebumps.
I've spent my life aware of my body—an instrument, a discipline, a thing to be corrected in mirrors.
Under his hands it becomes something else. Something worshipped.
He starts at my jaw. His mouth moves down the column of my throat, pausing at my pulse until my heartbeat rises to meet his lips.
His hands map me like terrain—the curve of my waist, the ladder of my ribs, the crease of my hip—each pass slower than the last, until my skin feels tuned to him, every nerve waiting to learn where he'll land next.
"Please." It leaves me on a breath.
"Patience." Warm against my collarbone. "You'll get everything."
My toes point of their own accord—fifteen years of training reduced to a reflex under his mouth. He captures my breast, thumb circling the tightening peak, letting the ache build until I'm trembling for a reason that has nothing to do with fear, before his mouth finally closes over it.
A ragged gasp tears from my throat. I arch my back, burying my hands in his dark hair. The sensation is electric, pulling a desperate heat into my core.
He lifts his head, gray eyes locking onto mine.
"The first time usually hurts." His voice is a low rumble. "And I'm big. I don't want to hurt you."
A genuine laugh bubbles up in my throat. I slide my hands down the rigid muscles of his chest. "That's okay. You can make it up to me during rounds two and three."
Shock flashes across his face, swallowed by a dark grin. Virginal, but not innocent—he's finally getting it.
"Rounds two and three." He repeats the promise, his voice thick. "I'm not going to rush. I'm going to savor this."
His hand slides down my stomach, rough fingers stripping the last of the fabric away. He parts my thighs, his touch firm and possessive.
He makes sure pain isn't the first thing I feel.
His fingers find the slick heat between my legs. He strokes me, mapping my reactions, waking nerve endings I never knew existed. His mouth returns to my breast. He draws the peak between his lips, sucking hard before his teeth bite down.
The pressure builds fast. He deepens the touch between my thighs, his thumb finding the sensitive nerve and settling into a relentless rhythm while his teeth scrape my nipple.
I cry out, my hips lifting off the canvas. The control I fought so hard to maintain shatters. The tension coils tight in my stomach and detonates into a blinding flash of pure sensation.
I shatter around his fingers, fingernails digging into his shoulders as the orgasm tears through my body.
He lifts his head, watching me come apart. His expression is dark and satisfied.
He shifts his weight, settling his hips between my thighs.
"Look at me." He catches my wrists, pinning my hands above my head on the rough canvas.
I lock my eyes with his.
"I'm not usually gentle." His voice is a rough rasp. "But I'm going to try. Even so ... It's going to hurt."
"That's okay. Pain doesn't frighten me." I lift my hips, seeking the friction. "And you could never frighten me. Please don't treat me like I'll break."
He hesitates, the operator warring against his instincts.
"I want my first time to be memorable." The demand leaves my lips in a rush. "I've fantasized about this moment with you."
Amusement flashes across his dark expression. "You fantasized about me?"
"I did." A breathless laugh escapes my throat. "And in my fantasies—you were never gentle."
The confession obliterates his remaining restraint.
"Then I won't be."
He releases my wrists, shifting his weight to grip my hips.
"Wait." I catch his hand. "Hold them."
He pauses. The desire in his eyes sharpens to a razor's edge. "You want me to restrain you?"
I bite my lower lip and nod.
A low growl vibrates in his chest. He catches both of my wrists in one hand and holds them there, exactly as I asked.
For all the threat in him, he's gentle at first. He pushes into me with care. The first pain is a sharp, tearing flash of heat. I gasp, arching my back against the bed.
The pain dissolves, swallowed by something enormous. Fullness. Stretching. The impossible fact of him inside me.
He goes utterly still.
"Breathe." His forehead drops to mine, his arms shaking with the effort of not moving. "Breathe, then tell me."
I breathe. My body softens around him by degrees, pain melting into pressure, pressure into an ache that wants. We stay like that, joined and motionless, his heartbeat slamming against my chest so hard I can't tell it from mine.
"Move." The word comes out broken. "Please. Move."
He bends his head, lips brushing the shell of my ear.